I can't see that that kid is that different from people who have been willing to go on suicide missions in all our wars, and send their friends off.

Human beings are so capable of compatrmentalising their actions it's not even that hard to imagine how someone would be willing to destroy thousands of ordinary people going about their daily work. That is what happens in war. And for most of my life there have been people sitting in silos and in bombers who have been willing to do that, not for thousands, but for millions, in the certainty thta they will die as well - even though they hoped desperately it never came to that.

What is peculiarly nightmareish about this though, for me, is the thought of those young men, sitting in a plane full of ordinary passengers, looking them in the eye and knowing they were flying them to their death.